No self-respecting political leader should be without a plan for green jobs. When Sweden’s Fredrik Reinfeldt met the UK’s David Cameron last year, the two prime ministers agreed that they would work together on creating “green jobs”. In 2009, after the anaemic turnout in the European Parliament elections, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel called for a “strong Europe” that should take the lead in creating green jobs. Not to be outshone by member states, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, called for “three million green-collar workers” to “complement our blue and white collar workers” by 2020.

There is a bull market in green jobs. In January 2008, the Commission envisaged more than one million jobs in renewable energy technologies resulting from European Union climate and energy legislation. Three years on, officials are now predicting more than three million jobs will come from the renewable industry by 2020. This is already an advance on Barroso’s three million “green-collar jobs”, which seemed to cover all green technologies.

Hype v substance

Cynics might see inflation in green jobs as a triumph of hype over substance. There is, however, no exact agreement about what a green job is (see box), and some ‘green jobs’ may not be that new. Making and installing solar panels and wind turbines are obviously ‘green jobs’. But do the workers making the steel for the turbine or the glass for the panel also have green jobs? Likewise, just as some energy-intensive jobs have a pale green lining, some conventional ‘environmental jobs’ are not that good for the planet. Statisticians count waste collection as environmental services, although few would see incinerating rubbish as a green activity.

Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a Paris-based think-tank for rich countries, estimate that 3.4 million people in the EU27 work in the so-called eco-industries, that include waste and sewage collection, air-pollution control, renewable energy, recycling, and energy-efficient construction. In 2008 these industries had a turnover of €319 billion, accounting for 2.5% gross domestic product.

But pinning down Barroso’s three-million “green-collar jobs” is much harder. “It is very difficult to identify what these green jobs would be,” says Reinhilde Veugelers, a professor in economics at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank. “Would they be new jobs on the basis of green innovation or jobs created by companies producing in a green fashion?” she asks.

Barroso has yet to spell out precisely what his calculation is based on. But his 2008 speech suggested that he had low-carbon energy in mind, since he referred principally to solar power, wind energy and electric cars – with a glancing reference to agriculture. When EU employment ministers called in December 2010 for a European plan to promote green jobs and the green economy, they referred to these same industries, while an early draft of the employment ministers’ conclusions quoted US President Barack Obama on the clean-energy economy. The prize that the EU’s politicians have in mind is being world leader in producing solar panels, not being the world’s best binmen.

Veugelers considers the Commission’s three million figure optimistic. She believes that EU policy is not providing strong-enough incentives for new industries to thrive. The EU’s emissions trading system (ETS), a cap-and-trade system, has put a price on carbon emissions, but prices remain low, volatile and unpredictable, according to her analysis. “The good news is that [the ETS] is so weak it doesn’t produce any costs, but that is also the bad news: it is so weak that it doesn’t create opportunities.”

Fact File

Different shades of green

As the International Labour Organization (ILO) has noted, “green jobs” come in different shades.

Working on a wind-farm or solar-energy park seem to be obvious examples. But some ‘brown’ jobs are essential for these young industries. Is the steel worker who produces the steel for a wind turbine doing a green job? What about the coal-fired power station fitted with carbon capture and storage technology? Many old industries are making some efforts to reduce their carbon footprint. Aircraft and car manufacturers are making more energy-efficient engines, but not everyone would put the internal combustion engine in the vanguard of the green economy.

The ILO also underlines that many “green jobs” are not decent jobs, but can be “dirty, dangerous and difficult”, especially in developing countries. Chinese workers taking scrap metal out of old televisions and computers may be part of the global recycling industry, but exposure to toxic chemicals puts their health at risk.

Eurostat and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development describe environmental goods and services as those that “measure, control, restore, prevent, treat, minimise, research and sensitise environmental damages to air, water, soil as well as problems related to waste, noise, biodiversity and landscapes”.

On the broadest possible measure of the green economy, which includes eco-tourism and organic farming, 8.67 million people in the EU27 have green jobs, equivalent to 6% of the labour force. But a narrower definition covering renewable energy, recycling green construction and air-pollution control, shows that 3.4m work in the ‘eco-industries’.

Green jobs seems an erroneous concept. I would prefer the concept of greening the economy

‘Unhelpful’ green focus

But business groups and trade unions see the green focus as unhelpful and call on policymakers to broaden their view to embrace a wider range of the economy. “‘Green jobs’ seems an erroneous concept. I would prefer the concept of greening the economy,” says Renate Hornung-Draus, a managing director at the Confederation of German Employers (BDA). “Jobs in the traditional sector are becoming greener and greener,” she says, citing the chemicals industry as an example of a carbon-intensive industry that has been improving its environmental performance.

Behind this view is a concern that distorted emphasis on greening could drive Europe’s energy-intensive industries to other parts of the world with less ambitious environmental policies. “We should avoid driving carbon-intensive production away from Europe, this would be bad both for jobs and for climate protection,” she says.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) takes a similar approach. “Green jobs are not new kinds of jobs,” says Anne Panneels, a policy adviser at ETUC, citing the example of the construction industry. Building eco-efficient homes and offices is not a radical change for workers from constructing inefficient ones, she points out: “They are mostly the same kinds of jobs done by the same kind of workers”.

Rather than being the realisation of a vision dreamt up by well-meaning politicians, the shift to a low-carbon economy may be another of those remorseless seismic disruptions, analogous to the changes wrought by the steam engine, the personal computer, or more recently, the acceleration of globalisation that moved production east. These upheavals created winners and losers.

This is why the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency, insists that governments should ensure “a just transition”, making training and new jobs available for those who will inevitably suffer from the shakeout. If people cannot make a living in the “green economy”, the radical argument goes, there is a risk that environmental policies will generate an anti-climate backlash, similar to the anxieties over ‘made in China’ and Polish plumbers that were provoked by globalisation.

Panneels is no alarmist, but she argues that politicians need to do more to ensure that workers do well in the low-carbon economy, by ensuring high-quality, skilled jobs are available, as well as training. “If governments don’t use climate policies to create good new jobs, it will be a missed opportunity,” she says. For many analysts the low-carbon economy is a reminder that the EU has some familiar labour-market problems to solve.

Veugelers stresses that one of the EU’s priorities should be developing flexible labour markets, making it easier for employers to hire and fire workers. “This is one of the weaker points in Europe, although we are making progress,” she says.

Green jobs may be the political fashion of the moment, but the challenge of moving to a low-carbon economy runs deep.